The Spiritual Odyssey of an Indian American Physicist

SPOTLIGHT: DR MANI LAL BHAUMIK

Globally, every minute somebody is undergoing an eye surgery called LASIK. When every Lasik is completed, a royalty amount is instantly transferred to a scientist who invented the excimer laser which is the laser device employed for Lasik surgery. In this article we introduce that world famous scientist, Dr Mani Lal Bhaumik who rose to the highest pedestal of fame from a poor family in a small village called Tamluk in Bengal.

Standing in front of his huge mansion at Bel Air, California, Dr Bhaumik was deep in thought. He wandered around the lawn to pick up trash, empty cans along with innumerable champagne corks scattered all over the place which were the remnants of the merriment the previous night. Depositing them all in the trash bin, story of his magical rise in worldly achievements uncovered in his brain like a flash. As he closed the gate of the farm, a strong desire popped up from his chaotic mind to create a new alloy of science and spirituality. An alloy which would be strong enough to withstand the centrifugal force of materialistic amusements.

He became aware that worldly reality of evanescent magical existence of material gain had unfolded from the same source which shaped his own existence. Classical physics with its mechanistic view of the cosmos has cut God off from the human mind. This left an open wound of spiritual despair, tyranny and endless war.

Bhaumik identifies a solution to the existing world’s problem with a story of the spiritual odyssey of a man of sci­ence. This story has been transformed into a book, Code Name: God, The Spiritual Odyssey of a Man of Science, which went into several reprints and reproductions beginning with the US in 2005, India in 2006 and several other countries thereafter. It has been translated into more than 136 languag­es, including Hindi.

The Austrian American Physicist Fritjof Capra , author of the famous book The Tao of Physics, commented , “The author’s personal odyssey… In the attempts to find common ground be­tween eastern spirituality and western science is eloquently told and makes for fascinating reading.”

EARLY PERIOD: PREPARING THE GROUND

Bhaumik was born in the village of Tamluk in Bengal in 1931. Mani Lal’s father was Gunadhar Bhaumik, a school teacher, and his mother was named Lolita. The young boy was brought up by his paternal grandmother Sarada with love and affection as his mother was always busy with household affairs. Gunadhar Bhaumik was an ardent disciple of Gandhiji. His political occupation left him with little time for family and his son. The boy grew up in a typical Indian village with abundance of poojas, temple visits, celebration of festivals, like Durga Puja, Holi, etc., in a strong family and social set up. These religious and cultural elements made a deep impact in the mind of little Mani Lal.

One day, when father was at home, he took his son for a walk late in the evening. Looking at the vastness of the star sprinkled sky, little Mani asked, “Father, is this God?” His father said that he would understand and get the answer to the question when he grew up. On another occasion, standing on the banks of a tributary of the majestic river Ganga and visualising the expanse of the water body, the same question came to his mind again. Unknowingly, he was being impregnated with the learning of the essence of consciousness pervading the universe which Indian sages called Brahman—the ultimate cause of cre­ation of the universe.

It was Max Planck, the originator of quantum theory, who said, “I regard consciousness as primary. I regard mat­ter as a derivative of consciousness.” Ar­thur Eddington once said, “Although the physical world runs, that unknown con­tent must surely be the stuff of our own consciousness.” Similar connections between modern science and the Indian knowledge system were realised by initiators of quantum mechanics like Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg. Ev­erything in the universe is interconnected through a universal consciousness. It is not possible to separate out individuals from the field of universal consciousness. This fact is expressed in Indian philoso­phy through the maha vakya, “Aham Brahmasmi” or “I am Brahman”.

Advanced physics describing quan­tum field theory pictures elementary particles like electrons as excitations in quantum fields extending through the infinite vastness of the universe. This makes everything in the universe in­terconnected so that any disturbance at one space-time point will be felt at far distances. This makes the diversi­ties experienced in the world as illusion or maya. Indian philosophy and culture have implanted strong faith in the mind of people. Gandhiji was the living model to Indians who put faith into action—a karma yogi. As a young boy of ten, Mani Lal got a chance to serve Gandhiji when he visited Tamluk to spread the idea of freedom struggle which culmi­nated into a turning point, known as the Quit India movement. In the camp, Gandhiji addressed young boys and girls. He did not believe that literacy and knowledge for their own sake would not make up for an education. “Sole pur­pose of education is to bring out the best in us.” Bhaumik remembered Gandhiji’s words, “victory from within,” and ap­plied those to himself in future.

Bhaumik also remembers the In­dian freedom fighter and revolution­ary Matangini Hazra (1869-1942) who taught him the virtue of tenacity with the mantra, “Never give up and nothing happens without a fight”. While lead­ing a protest march of the Quit India Movement in Tamluk, Matangini fell to the British bullets and achieved martyr­dom fighting for the country’s freedom. She breathed her last, chanting ‘Vande Mataram’. To Bhaumik, Matangini Hazra was a living example of the advice she had given others: “Nothing happens without self-sacrifice, and even some­times death. But we must never give up, even in the face of our own end.” In fact, the voice of Matangini was a driving force for Bhaumik to climb up the ladder of great success in future.

LIBERATION FROM POVERTY

Bhaumik started his schooling in a lo­cal primary school walking four miles of muddy path every day, repeating Matangini Hazra’s mantra, “Never give up.” As a boy Bhaumik resolved to make money and gather wealth which could be earned only through education. He says, “Education will eventually turn knowledge into gold: Learn and gather sufficient knowledge to liberate myself from the black hole of poverty and mis­erable life in villages like Tamluk.”

He completed high school education with first rank. After completing his graduation from Scottish Church College in Calcutta, Bhaumik joined the University of Calcutta for a mas­ter’s degree in Physics where Prof SN Bose was one of his teachers. Due to his brilliance in Mathematics and Physics, Bhaumik became a favourite student of Bose. Following the high scores in his master’s programme, Bhaumik got a fel­lowship in 1954 to do PhD in Physics at IIT Kharagpur. In 1958, he received his PhD degree in Physics based on his work in dye mixtures and energy transfer be­tween them. He published his findings in The Journal of Chemical Physics in which there was a paper by William Mc­Millan, renowned professor of chemical physics at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Based on a strong recommendation from Prof SN Bose, Prof Edward McMillan offered Bhaumik post-doctoral fellowship at UCLA, to which he felt like he was es­caping from a black hole of miserable life from Tamluk to a life of wealth and satisfaction. He was on his way to the land of his dreams.

At UCLA, McMillan guided Bhaumik to the wonder world of re­search in advanced physical chemistry. Within a year of his arrival in the US, laser was invented, the first of which was the ruby laser, invented by Theo­dore Maiman in 1960. After his tenure at UCLA, Bhaumik took the job of a scientist in the electro-optical system division of the famous company Xe­rox. At Xerox, he developed a laser us­ing the compound chelate, receiving a huge grant from the US Air Force. Ac­knowledging the great works done by Bhaumik, Xerox rewarded him with shares of its stock.

Stress and rivalries at work, job pressure, American way of fast life and competition from other groups made Bhaumik slide into depression. Then one day, he discovered in his bag of cultural legacy a tool—meditation. He tried meditation and increasing the cycle of meditation every day made him cross the threshold. This made Bhaumik to get back to his original state of mind and resolved “never to give up”. It was a eureka point when he discovered that meditation brought back to him the high energy to continue work with high in­tention and originality. Acknowledging Bhaumik’s contributions to the study of Physics, UCLA established The Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics.

In 1964, taking leave of absence from Xerox, Bhaumik returned to his native land and started practicing medi­tation regularly. Clarity started to de­velop in his mind and he felt that his true calling was Science. He knew that the fruits of his research in laser technology will be a gift to mankind.

FROM RAGS TO RICHES

Bhaumik returned to Xerox with great zeal to do more work. In 1968, he was invited to join the research team of Northrop Corporations, a major aero­space laboratory in the USA. There he developed the most powerful laser, namely carbon monoxide laser, work­ing at room temperature, which was thought to be impossible until then. Bhaumik got international recognition as a leading laser technologist of that time. This made him take up group lead­ership of an international collaboration project under Northrop Corporation, Maxwell Laboratory in San Diego and Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. As the project leader and principal investigator, at a meeting of Optical Society of America in 1973, he reported the first demonstration of ex­cimer laser using xenon gas. This mar­vellous class of excimer lasers revolu­tionized surgery and helped Bhaumik to receive his everlasting fortune, a real ak­shaya patra due to his hard work and the motto, “never give up”.

Wide applications of excimer laser is in cornea sculpting, the corrective eye surgery known under the trade name LASIK. By careful sculpting of the eye lens by scraping a thin layer of corneal tissues, conditions like myopia and hy­permetropia can be corrected without using contact lens or glasses. Recogni­tion came to him from far and near. He was elected as a Fellow of American Physical Society as well as IEEE. His alma mater IIT awarded an honorary DSc degree in Physics for his lifetime academic achievements.

In appreciation of his laser patents, Northrop Corporation compensated him with shares of its stock. With stra­tegic investments, his wealth grew there­on. At the age of 55, he took retirement from Northrop and started living life as he wanted to, owning hilltop houses at Beverly Hills and Bel Air, and driving a Rolls Royce, among others.

During this high flying period of his life, a TV host, Robin Leach, profiled Mani Lal Bhaumik from India as an example of a story of rags to riches, for the series, Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous.

In spite of his meteoric rise to the top of the social ladder, he felt something nagging his inner mind. He flirted with worldly pleasures for one decade when he felt a whispering in his ear, “Happi­ness is an inside job, Mani. It can never come from without.” Bhaumik realised how unhappy a wealthy man can be. He reached a turning point in his life where material abundance could no longer hold off the question—could science in some manner vouch for the existence of the One, whose singularity anchors all great faiths, whose presence he felt as a young man on the dome of star sprinkled night? He asked, could science restore God? Bhaumik was discovering himself, the answer to his question as his father told him as a child to wait till he grew old.

CODE NAME: GOD

As Bhaumik navigated his path, he turned for guidance to those sources of wisdom closest to him, but ultimately to the source of all wisdom. His success did not come overnight. Bhaumik explored the common elements of the world’s great religions. He got the firsthand knowledge that by excluding God from the mathematics of science, we were cut­ting off its roots. He got evidence rising from within that consciousness alters material reality. He remembered the lesson from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and passionately reaffirmed his intention that we become what we think. The missing link between the mysticism of his youth and synthesis he sought as a scientist, is an empirical validation of his belief in the one source of creation. With progress made in the field of science and technology, time has come to enquire—do we still need God? Answer to this question is YES. Just as the life of an individual is controlled by the code of DNA in his gene, evolution of the cosmos also is dictated by its own genetic code. This code name is GOD.

*The writer is Visiting Scientist, Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi. He can be reached at nampoori@gmail.com.